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Friday, August 17, 2012

A week in the life of homeschoolers - August 11th - 17th

August 11th - 17th

In our homeschool this week...
We had a great BUSY week filled with lots of fieldtrip fun. Normally our fieldtrips are more spread out but this month they all seemed to fall into the same week. Which is fine the kids still were learning and that is all that matters.Here are some highlights:

Saturday we went on our trip to Valdosta to Wild Adventures. We had to get up very early for our 4 hr car ride. Luckily my parents van has a dvd player so that kept the kids very entertained. Wild Adventures was amazing I cannot wait to get my review finished so I can share all the fabulous things this park has to offer. Sunday we spent the day traveling back home. The kids really wanted to stay at the hotel another night for some reason they thought a hotel (even a very cheap one) was super cool. Monday we took a tour of Brusters Ice Cream shop and learned all about how ice cream and waffle cones are made. It was fun and tasty!! Then we headed to speech therapy. Rowyn had part of his reevaluation and has showed improvement. After speech therapy we had lunch, went to the Pediatrician and then visited the Petsmart. It always amazes me how much you can learn at a pet store. Gwyn also had a great time sorting through bags of hand-me-down clothes. Tuesday we were supposed to go geocaching with the homeschool group but due to rain we had to change our plans. So instead we started the desert part of our sand unit study. We read some books, did some online learning, watched a few magic school bus videos on YouTube (they can never just watch one) and located the worlds deserts on a map. Wednesday we went on an amazing nature walk and did some nature journaling. I wrote about it in more detail here. Thursday we went to a glass blowing/flame working demonstration. The kids had a great time and got to see a wine glass be made. This was a great way to wrap up the glass part of our unit study. Then we had to go see a Pediatric Surgeon about the lump on Rowyns wrist. Friday we had our "not back to school" picnic. The kid had a blast palying with their friends and having squirt gun and water balloon fights. There were about 50+ kids at the picnic. Whoever says homeschool kids are not socialized is crazy...I sometimes think mine are over socialized.

In my life this week…
I am still playing catch up. I am so far behind on everything. I had plans to take the kids to the Atlanta Zoo tomorrow (it was a FREE day for Fulton County residents) but I am cancelling it so I can hopefully get caught up tomorrow. I heard it gets really crowded anyway so it probably wouldn't be fun standing in lines and fighting a crowd.

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…
Take nature walks at least once a month. They are a great way to learn and explore this beautiful world we are blessed with. See more details and pictures from our most recent nature walk here.Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
This week we took a tour of Brusters Ice Cream, went on a nature walk, saw a glass blowing/flame working demonstration and had our "not back to school picnic". Oh and we had a blast on Saturday at Wild Adventures in Valdosta.

Next week we will be going on a fieldtrip to the hospital and the library for a presentation on common GA birds (birds just happens to be our unit study for next month so this will be a great intro).My favorite thing this week was…
Hands down our trip to Wild Adventures. We had so much fun spending time together as a family on our short getaway.

What’s working/not working for us…
Some of the planning pages I am using...one of the many things I need to do revamp some of them to suit our very eclectic homeschool style and haphazard routine.Questions/thoughts I have…
If you are have a similar homeschool style/routine like ours how do you plan or sort of plan to make sure you are covering everything you hope to? I guess I am sort of a borderline unschooler but I cannot commit 100% to that style because I am too type A. The kids get to choose a lot of what they want to do throughout the day but I want to make sure they are covering certain things daily or at least several times a week..for example specific reading skills, math, art, music, Spanish (history and science are always covered through our unit study). So what are some suggestions?Things I’m working on…
That darn to do list which pretty soon will require its own to do list.I’m grateful for…
Our awesome homeschool group which has over 65 amazing families.I’m praying for…
My son Rowyn who has to go in for surgery next Tuesday on his wrist. He has a cyst (well they are 99% sure its a cyst it could also be a tumor) that needs to be removed. Poor kiddo has to go without eating after midnight and without eating or drinking after 6 am and his surgery is at 10 am. He is gonna be very upset about missing breakfast his favorite meal of the day.

Favorite Resource(s)...
YouTube Magic School Bus shows. Yup in our homeschool YouTube is a huge resource. My kids can never watch just one of these shows. We started the desert part of our sand unit study so the plan was to watch the All Dried Up episode...but they ended up watching 4 and mommy took a nap.A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

3 comments:

Kathy, I still struggle somewhat with fitting everything in. It seems that science and art are hard to fit in. I try to dedicate 2 afternoons a week to science, and do at least one art appreciation activity each week. It's all a balancing act, that's for sure!

Thanks for linking -- and I hope you get to a Chiropractor soon... thanks for your comment on my blog today!

Field trips are LOTS of fun, and so much can be learned from them, but they sure can be exhausting! I'm impressed you fit so much into your week!Speaking as someone who has an unschooling perspective on learning (and who has far too many ideas of projects to accomplish!), I find that working out a rough routine with my girls' input helps us a lot to get things done. This also is important to us because I work part-time as well. Remembering to be flexible is really helpful too :)Thanks for linking up and sharing with Favorite Resources!

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Hello my name is Kathy Balman. I am a wife to my wonderful husband who I married in 2000 on my 19th birthday and a mother to two wonderful children. My daughter is 8 and my son is 7.

If you are curious as to why my blog is named Kathys Cluttered Mind just take a look around and you will see why. My brain NEVER shuts down and there is so much I want to see, say and do! So my blog is a way for me to do that. I used to have one niche now I have several. I have readers from all over the World and from all different walks of life. Some of my favorite things to write about are homeschooling/unschooling, geocaching, travel, fieldtrips, freebies, movies, books, healthy eating, Georgia, LEGO, volunteering and more. We also do product, travel and curriculum reviews!